This is a non-provisional application based on provisional application 60/134,550 filed on May 17, 1999.
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a color image processing method, and more particularly, to a method for indexing a color image so that searching for a color image can be efficiently performed.
The present invention also includes a color image searching method for searching an image corresponding to a query image in a database indexed by the color image processing method.
2. Description of the Related Art
According to conventional color image processing methods, one color is expressed as one vector in a three-dimensional (hereinafter referred to as a 3-D) color space composed of three axes ranging from 0 to 255. Thus, each pixel in an image is expressed as one of 256×256×256 values. That is, a database must have 256×256×256 storage places so as to store a color feature vector of the image in the database. Also, in a matching process, searching of 256×256×256 values may have to be performed. Thus, according to the conventional color image processing methods, a large capacity database is required, and it takes much time to search a desired image from the database.